It took more than 20 minutes and eight dropped WhatsApp calls to finally connect with Farida Adel in Gaza. Internet service is not reliable anywhere in the territory, including in the provisional co-working space in the city of Deir Al-Balah, where she and 50 or so others work remotely. An English teacher by training, Adel splits her time between a makeshift classroom in a tent, where she teaches for free, and a table in this cafe turned workspace where she translates documents from Arabic to English. Over the grainy video call, other freelancers who had been forcibly displaced to the central Gazan city could be seen working alongside her, all of them vying for the coveted internet connection.
Adel spends six hours a day in that co-working space completing assignments received via Upwork, a freelance work marketplace. It is one of three free-to-use workspaces set up by Hope Hub, an initiative started in a tent in Rafah a few months into Israel’s assault on Gaza. She earns $200 a month, with Upwork taking 10% and currency exchange companies another 20 to 30%.
“Everything is devastation around us,” Adel said. “This has diminished the economic opportunities for people in Gaza. I’m looking for a job for eight months. I evacuated alone without my parents. I did not have any income to support me. I just open my laptop and go to work as a freelancer.”
Adel, like so many others, has been left with few other options to work. Israel’s 17-year land and sea blockade of Gaza has long limited economic opportunities within the strip, among the reasons why at least 12,000 workers in the territory have turned to online freelance work for income, according to the UN. In the aftermath of 7 October 2023, Israel’s bombardment of the already besieged strip has rendered jobs nearly nonexistent, according to an assessment by the International Labor Organization.
Meanwhile, a year of airstrikes has decimated Gaza’s infrastructure, making the two resources freelancers depend on – a strong internet connection and reliable electricity – hard to come by. When internet service is available, it’s slow or unstable. Electricity comes and goes.
Then there’s the matter of their safety. Adel and other workers who spoke to the Guardian said they take on considerable risk when they make their way to co-working spaces or ad-hoc internet hot spots on the street.
“Workers in Gaza live under the constant fear of airstrikes,” said Adel, who has lost 300 members of her family over the last year. “This kind of problem, no one around the world experiences. This situation is just in Gaza.”
Before Adel could say more, she was interrupted by a flurry of movement. She said she had to cut the call short. Parts of the city were being bombed and everyone in the co-working space was being told to leave. Adel, who had evacuated from the north of Gaza and left her parents behind, didn’t know where she’d go. But she’d be fine, she said assuredly. She was just afraid for the safety of the children she taught.
“It’s not easy to work in this environment,” Adel said. “After one minute, I don’t know if I will not exist, [if] I will be a martyr.”
‘I’d rather risk my life to work’
When Waleed Iky talks to potential clients on Upwork or Mostaql – a popular freelancing platform in the Middle East and north Africa – he doesn’t always tell them that he lives in Gaza. Iky, an entrepreneur who started a one-man marketing operation, said he worries clients might see his situation or even his background as a liability.
“It’s risky for business to work with us sometimes,” Iky said. “[Sometimes] the clients know and support. If they don’t, we don’t mention it. We do our best for it to not affect our work.”
Disruptions to work are unavoidable, Iky said. He graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) just two months before the war began and spent the first five months of Israel’s assault evacuating to cities he and his family were told would be safe from airstrikes. One of those towns, Al-Zahra, crumbled around him.
“They destroyed the whole city,” he said. “Twenty-four buildings collapsed in front of our eyes. For my family it was a hard night.”
During those few months, Iky and his family focused on simply staying alive. Starting his business again was the furthest thing from his mind. But now, like Adel, he works out of Hope Hub. He currently has two clients through Upwork that he does marketing for.
Leaving the tents where many of the freelancers have sheltered is dangerous. There’s often no telling when or where bombs will be dropped, whether they’ll be shot at or otherwise attacked. But for Iky, it’s better than sitting around waiting for the next bomb to go off.
“I decided to get back online,” Iky said. “When I got back to work, my psychological health got better. Staying home and not doing anything, not doing what you love, it’s killing more than my muscles. I’d rather work and risk my life to work than stay at home.”
For many clients, it’s been business as usual, regardless of the difficulties of workers living in Gaza under bombardment. One potential client asked Iky if he’d be comfortable working with an Israeli organization. He told them he would not. They decided not to hire him. Others offer little flexibility around the deadlines they set for Iky’s projects.
“Some of them are abroad who don’t understand the struggle we have,” Iky said.
The freelancers have to take turns charging their laptops, in an effort to not use too much electricity. An hour of charging his laptop buys Iky four to five hours of work. When the electricity is out, he’ll try to send his clients updates over WhatsApp or go to a nearby cafe and pay for internet.
Even when they do manage to work, many freelancers have difficulty accessing their earnings. Bank branches and ATMs have been destroyed, PayPal has stopped providing its services to all Palestinians in the occupied territories and currency exchange shops charge a fee of anywhere from 15 to 30% depending on the demand. Iky, one of the fortunate few with a bank account, often opts to wait to withdraw any money to avoid paying exorbitant fees.
Unstable internet and airstrikes
Iky is one of more than 1,300 freelancers and students who have used Hope Hub’s flexible workspaces across Gaza, Egypt and now Lebanon since Salah Ahmad, who is from Gaza, and his co-founder Fady Issawi launched the initiative in January 2024. While other co-working spaces have since opened up, Hope Hub was the first to begin operating during the war and remains one of the few that is free to use. Because of the limited resources, Hope Hub divides the day into four timed shifts – the first one for remote workers, the second two for freelancers and the last for students.
Ahmad had been working with freelancers since at least 2020 when he opened his first co-working space, which offered mentorship and training for remote workers in partnership with international universities and organizations. But he, like hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, was forced to leave his life and his dreams behind after 7 October. The building that once housed his nearly 11,000 sq ft (1,022 sq metre) workspace was hit by airstrikes twice, he said, completely destroying the company he and his team had built. Videos of the office before and after the strikes show debris and shattered glass where sleek and contemporary conference rooms and cafes once stood. Ahmad was displaced four times before he finally reached Rafah, which he and others were told would be a safe area.
It was there, in the Tal al-Sultan refugee camp, that he started Hope Hub with five people working out of a tent. He wanted to help people restart their companies or, at the very least, find something to fill their time and drown out the noise of drones buzzing around them.
“A lot of people feel that it is very difficult to do nothing and just wait in an area that is being bombed every minute. You just wait to die in the next bomb,” he said. “But we are trying to survive.”
He and Issawi began raising funds to expand Hope Hub. They searched for the most cost-effective ways to provide electricity…